rmdir when directory is not empty

Robert P. J. Day rpjday at mindspring.com
Tue Dec 20 19:04:11 UTC 2005


On Tue, 20 Dec 2005, CodeHeads wrote:

> Chasecreek Systemhouse wrote:
> >>OR rm -fr /dir/dir-delete-me
> >
> >
> > That won't work on directories that have tens of thousands of files.
> > --
> > WC -Sx- Jones | http://ccsh.us/ | Open Source Consulting
>
> That is weird, it works for me. :)

i suspect some folks are thoroughly confused with the historical limit
on how long a command, after globbing, can *expand* to.  if you just
type something like:

  $ rm -rf mydir

there's no globbing so there's no problem.

  if, OTOH, you're in a horrifically-populated directory, then typing:

  $ rm *

*might*, with some earlier shells, cause an error to the effect of
"Arg list too long" just because of the wildcard expansion.  this has
*nothing* to do with the first example above, which should work just
fine.

rday




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